The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint. 671
I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I’m in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good. 640
Yes, 85 percent of the art you see isn’t any good. But everyone has a different opinion about which 85 percent is bad. That in turn creates fantastically unstable interplay and argument. 712
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things. 1.86K
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for. 708
When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art. 1.74K
History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there’s been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it. 612
My musical knowledge is so bad it’s embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo. 758
In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: ‘Would you really want President Hattersley?’ I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all. 709
I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad? 951
People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad? 614
Philanthropy without scale and sustainability is like any other bad business that will simply wither and die on the vine. 2.52K
I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don’t want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there’s a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly. 653
I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you’re a Democrat. Sometimes that’s good, obviously, and sometimes that’s obviously bad. But in the news business, there’s no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news. 1.38K
If you can’t pay for a thing, don’t buy it. If you can’t get paid for it, don’t sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don’t wait for time. 1.39K
I’m a mad lover of sport. You cannot say a bad word to me about sports. So I know business is involved and I know it can be cynical, and, of course, I watch it, but for me it’s pure. 676
